DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN ONLINE ASSIGNMENT SUBMISSION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 

A CASE STUDY OF UNIVERSITY OF LAGOS (UNILAG).

ABSTRACT

The paper examines the design and implementation of an online assignment submission system. The challenges faced by students in meeting assignment deadlines and cost associated with printing hard copies of paper, necessitated the researcher to develop a user friendly system to tackle these challenges. The system allows students to submit assignments online to a particular course lecture, who have access to the system for grading purpose. The system was developed using PHP and MYSQL technologies.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SECTION ONE

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Objectives 

1.3 Scope of the study 

1.4 Limitations

1.5 Definition of terms

SECTION TWO

2.0 Literature review

SECTION THREE

3.0 Introduction

3.1 The existing system

3.2 Description of the proposed system

3.2.1 Use Case diagram for the proposed system

3.2.2 Activity diagram for the proposed system

3.3.1 Flowchart for the proposed system

3.4 Interface design

3.4.1 Login interface

3.4.2 Add assignment interface 

3.4.3 Teacher window interface 

3.4.4 Search window interface

3.5 Student personal details

3.6 Database structure

SECTION FOUR

4.1 Summary 

4.2 Recommendation 

4.3 Conclusion

REFERENCE

SECTION ONE

1.1 INTRODUCTION

An online assignment handling is a system contained within the Module virtual learning environment. The functionality of the standard assignment handling module has been extended to cater for all the Department's needs in terms of receiving assignments from students, making them available to tutors to mark, returning grades, comments and marked work to students and keeping Registry and course administrators informed at all stages of the process. Extension requests are an integral part of the system.

Universities, Polytechnics and colleges of education are considered the mainprovider of knowledge in various fields. Various coursesof studies are taught in institutions, covering several fieldsincluding applied Sciences, Math, Computer, HumanResource, and Accounting. Most courses at universitiesconsist of theoretical as well as practical subject matter. Toevaluate the level of understanding and degree ofcomprehension among students, assignments are often given.

Assignments are submitted by students either individuallyor in groups. Assignment management involves collecting,marking, and redistributing to students. Tregobov (1998) breaksthe process down into four stages: submission, recording,marking, and return. Online assignment submission andmanagement (OASM) involves the use of the World-WideWeb, the Internet and computers to aid this process (Jones, 2003). Withtraditional assignment submission system, lots of problemsarise especially when the students have to submit the answersof the assignment to the lecturer. There may be problems dueto distance, time, or format of the assignment (written orprinted). Also every learning process requires administrativesupport. Much of this administrative support is to some degreetransparent but if the latter is not well organized it coulddisrupt the flow of learning between students and the staff.

As the educational world is moving faster and becomingmore competitive, almost every university started to use anonline submission system, or newer technologies to facilitatetheir task, to have more time, and to be in pace with this fastmoving IT world.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Many reported failures in courses thought in the tertiary institutions can be attributed to the careless of the course representative or the teaching assistant who failed to submit an assignment paper to the lecturer for marking (Jones, 2003). Such careless could lead to a zero mark for the victim whose paper was declared missing or simply not found. The manual method of submitting assignments to the course lecturer or directly to the lecturer in most Nigerian Universities is simply not effective as these papers could get damaged or get missing due to the carelessness of the course representative or the lecturer.

Moreover, assignments that are large in terms of pages or volume could easily discourage a student from submitting due to financial constraints brought about by high cost of printing an assignment. All these problems highlighted are the main reasons the researcher is developing an electronic assignment submission system to curtail these challenges and make studying more enjoyable in our tertiary institutions.

1.3OBJECTIVES

The main objective of the paper is to design and implement an online assignment submission system. Specific objectives of the study are:

i) To develop a system for proper documentation of students’ record in the in the school system. 

ii) To create a database that will manage each student assignment submission and allow access by lecturers to access those files submitted by the student.

iii) To Create a quick search and advance search that the student / lecturer when sorting a file.

iv) To provide a system to assure equal opportunity and impartial review of student assignment submission

v) To provide a full school system by that will take care of registration and grading processes.

1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The study focuses on the areas of concentration of this project i.e. the assignment submission and grading processes. It also covers the faculty registration, lecturer registration, course registration, department registration, users registration, student registration, perform scores/grades registration, test scores assessment and article entry.

1.5 LIMITATIONS

This project covers some of the aspect of a computer software based assignment submission management system. However, the following are the constraints:

A constraint in project management is any restriction that defines a project’s limitations; the scope, for example, is the limit of what the project is expected to accomplish. 

The three most significant project constraints are: schedule, cost and scope.

• SCHEDULE: Sometimes stated more broadly as time, specifies the timeline according to which those components will be delivered, including the final deadline for completion.

• COST: Sometimes stated more broadly as resources, involves the financial limitation of resources input to the project and also the overall limit of the total amount that can be spent.

• SCOPE: A project’s scope involves specific goals, deliverables and tasks that defines the boundaries of the project.

1.6 DEFINITION OF TERMS

Assignment: a task or piece of work allocated to someone as part of a job or course of study

Student: A student or pupil is a learner, or someone who attends an educational institution.

Online: indicates a state of connectivity.

Web-Based: Any program that is accessed over a network connection using HTTP rather than existing within a device’s memory.

Lecturer: A lecture is an oral presentation intended to present information or teaches people about a particular subject, for example by a university or college teacher.

Submission: the action of presenting a proposal, application, or other document for consideration or judgment.

Management: Is an academic discipline, a social science whose objective is to study organization and organizational leadership.

System: Set of computer components that is, an assembling of hardware, software and peripherals functioning together.